Ongoing Motivation to Practice

Motivation to practice can be challenging. Often we come to practice in search of something, whether it’s relief from suffering or that ineffable something beyond the usual that we need to return to. We dive into that practice, motivated by the newness of it, the subtle—or not so subtle—ego trip of being a Zen person, perhaps the felt need to change our life. But at a certain point we may well hit a wall; we may find that the “oomph” has gone out of our zazen, that we’re not so motivated to practice anymore. We’ve gone fairly far (though not anywhere near far enough), yet somehow regardless, the motivation to practice seems to have dried up or at least gone on vacation. That’s a challenging time—a very challenging time—and hopefully we won’t quit practicing because of it. At a certain point in my own practice I suddenly realized (or so I thought) that I didn’t want to come to awakening—a real quandary since I was living and training full time at the Rochester Zen Center, going to many sesshin specifically for the purpose of coming to awakening.

Of course I wanted to talk to Kapleau-roshi about it, but he refused to see me—a very wise decision on his part. The next sesshin—to which I’d applied anyway because some part of me really did want to keep going—I was not on the accepted list. It was devastating, and made me realize that I actually did want to come to awakening. I’d put on the brakes because I was perhaps too close for comfort—it’s a common experience for serious Zen students. That event was almost four decades ago, and of course I continued to practice and still continue to practice—and cannot conceive of an end to practice.

In my earlier practice years it was quite difficult to do zazen, and in the beginning I was doing it essentially alone; where I was living at the time there were no Zen centers, no Zen groups, and only one other person who knew how to do zazen. After doing zazen that way for a year or so it became clear that I needed to go to a sesshin so I flew to the United States and did so—and it was extremely difficult. Yet oddly, the morning following the end of sesshin, to my amazement and without realizing it I sat for two hours without moving; time vanished.

Although I sat for those two hours, amazed afterwards to see how much time had elapsed, on returning home it was a full three weeks before I could bring myself to even cross the threshold into the room where my mat and cushion waited for me. A tremendous resistance had built up. For some time after that it was a real push me-pull you relationship with practice, which is why I decided I’d better go live in Rochester, hopefully at the Center where I’d be required to sit whether I wanted to or not. It certainly seemed as if I didn’t have the self-discipline to sit on my own with any degree of regularity. So it was that I moved back to the United States and to Rochester, knowing no one but the few people I’d met at the workshop I’d attended the previous year there, not knowing if I’d be able to support myself, not knowing if I’d be allowed to live and train at the Center. But it felt so completely right to do so.

And it still was not easy. For years I wanted to flee. On the day that sesshin would begin—it would always start on a Saturday evening at the RZC and the afternoon was often free for residents at the Center—most people would head over to the formal herb garden down the street for a bit of nature. But I was so afraid that if I went out the door I’d never come back that I stayed inside; I didn’t even go out into the Zen Center’s enclosed back yard garden. It was very painful: Part of me wanted very much to practice because an earlier experience had given me a deep sense of what could come from practice—the freedom and the joy and the ease of living! But some other part of me was absolutely terrified of what would happen if I let go enough to potentially come to awakening. We can fear that all manner of things will happen if we pull out all the stops. How to deal with it? Taste that fear, get to know that anxiety! Feel intimately its qualities! It’s not the fear itself but what we assume it represents that is so terrifying. So dive into it! We don’t normally go into fear, we don’t normally really feel it, we don’t normally do anything but hold it at arms length and try to stamp it out like a wildfire. And yet, when we make friends with it by becoming intimately familiar with it, it loses its power.

So often when we are in an uncomfortable mind state it feels permanent. And yet even five minutes later we could be in a totally different mind state. Have faith that it will pass—things are always changing! The other side of that is that even the happy times will pass as well—and not to go chasing after them because that only brings on suffering, too. Be curious! What might unfold next? It could actually be quite interesting! Enjoy what’s there in the moment, and as it passes, allow it to move away, to dissolve, to disappear—and be open to what comes next. In a word, become one with each moment. If your position in life is dissolving, that can be especially painful—if we are attached to that status. But if we’re not attached to a particular role in life, then where is the problem? Zen practice can bring reveal that ability to be profoundly ok no matter what is going on.

There is a koan: “Sixteen Bodhisattvas Enter the Bath.” As they enter the water, each one of them is enlightened. The sensation of touching that warm water was enough to trigger that experience because their minds were ripe. The same can happen with us: Flora Courtois, after an extended period of profound questioning, had only to glance at her little desk one afternoon, home on vacation from university, when “the whole world turned on its axis” and nothing was ever the same again. She found herself living easily and joyfully. Her life changed radically because of that—and yours can, too.

We get caught in things because we have assumptions about it all. So often we live like a stone skipping across the surface of the water, occasionally in contact with life but the rest of the time dreaming about it. And yet, to live Life fully is so rich and so fulfilling! In order to do that we have to let go of assumptions and truly Live in the moment, allowing ourselves to Taste it just as it is and not through this lens of preconceived ideas about it. Tune in: Washing your hands, how does it feel, the slippery soap on your fingers? The water, is it cool? Is it warm? Is it hot? What does it really feel like? And the towel: What’s the quality of the towel you’re drying your hands with? And your hands: Are they completely dry? Or are they still damp—all over or just between the fingers? And who is it that is feeling all this???!!! Ponder this again and again and again—don’t ask it in words! With your awareness seated in your hara—your abdomen just below your belly button, tune in wordlessly to the moment. “What am I hearing?” “Who is it that is hearing?” “What am I seeing?” “Who is it that is seeing?” No matter what you’re doing, question it! Be as totally present as you can with that moment! When you do this deeply enough, you will have your answer, and that answer will be liberating.

And of course, as you already know, that’s not the end. What is necessary then is work to integrate what you have realized so that your behavior manifests that realization, so that you don’t just keep indulging in habit patterns but your behavior becomes enlightened behavior, in line with what you’ve understood. Part of this also is to work for the benefit of all beings and to share that understanding and the way to reach it, so that everyone may ultimately become free. This is why we were born.

This is our great gift: to have come into contact with the Dharma, to have felt a resonance with it, to have found a teacher, to have found a sangha and a place of practice. It is a tremendous gift and will go a very long way in supporting us in our search for true freedom. But life is short. Already we have lost our Dharma brother Fugen—just short of his 50th birthday! If you really give yourself to this practice there may still be time. Hakuin talks about the man Heshiro, who in just three days of deep questioning, had an awakening! Torei Enji, at the age of twenty-nine, having practiced since he was a child, became the great Zen master Hakuin’s Dharma heir—and he never stopped training after that. Torei was intent on continuing his own deepening practice and was quite reluctant to take the position of teacher.

Practice is not easy. “Straightforward bravery!” was a frequent admonition by Hakuin. Practice also takes persistence—stubbornness, really! It takes faith that you can actually realize that true freedom, return to your true home, as the masters proclaim. It takes dogged questioning, engaging that sense that there’s something beyond our normal way of experiencing that is really important to return to—something you knew once but have since lost touch with—but you can return to if you just reach far enough. And you can! The masters of old have shown us the way. We have this beautiful zendo to practice in and the support of our Dharma brothers and sisters; our practice is upheld in so many ways! I hope and pray that each one of you will take this to heart and practice deeply and awaken to that incredible joy and freedom that flow within you!

About Mitra Bishop

Ven. Frances Mitra Bishop-sensei is a Zen teacher and Dharma heir of Ven. Philip Kapleau-roshi (who she trained with beginning in 1976). In 1996, Lola Lee, Osho, who passed away in 1997, asked the Ven. Mitra Bishop-sensei to guide her students in their practice. Beginning Zen practice in 1974, Mitra-sensei is a Dharma heir of Ven. Philip Kapleau-roshi. Ordained as a Zen priest in 1986, she completed her formal training at the Rochester Zen Center. In 1992 she went to Okayama, Japan, where she continued to practice under the guidance of the Ven. Harada Shodo-roshi, Abbot of Sogen-ji, a Rinzai Zen temple. When Mitra-sensei returned to the United States in 1996, she was formally sanctioned to teach by Kapleau-roshi, and in that same year was asked to come to Hidden Valley Zen Center to teach. Concurrently, she established Mountain Gate, a monastic practice center in the mountains of northern New Mexico. Taking the admonition, “There’s no beginning to enlightenment, no end to practice,” to heart, she continues to train intensively with Harada-roshi, including spending several weeks each year at Sōgen-ji.

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